This study contributes to the existing literature in teacher education on the relationship between what are commonly referred to as beliefs with the theoretical framework of cultural models (DAndrade, 1992; Gee, 1996, 1999, 2004; Holland, 1975, 1999; Holland and Quinn, 1987; Shore, 1996), offering a richer understanding of how beliefs and cultural models impact teaching candidates abilities to learn to teach. More specifically, this study examines how teacher candidates beliefs and cultural models about schooling, teaching, and learning affect their capacity to learn and grow as educators through a teacher education program and how they develop professional identities as they are confronted with concepts and ideas that may not align with their cultural models about teaching. Additionally, this study examines how candidates negotiate the tensions that exist when beliefs and cultural models are confronted or challenged within the contexts of the teacher education program.
In conducting this study, attitude and belief inventories were taken across time and context, teaching and course artifacts were analyzed, teaching tapes were evaluated, and university and school site influences unpacked. Together these data strands helped to determine the ways in which cultural models were constructed and revised through a teacher education program. This study triangulated these various data strands to compile a holistic view of the relevance, influence, and significance of the different aspects of a programs components in influencing a candidates beliefs, cultural models, and emergent professional identities. Critical discourse analysis was the theoretical framework used for this study, using cultural models and beliefs as the unit of analysis, allowing for the analysis of competing ideologies regarding teaching and learning and connecting to the issues examined in this study, particularly how identity shifts and is constructed through participation in socially situated communities and practices. CDA provided a framework for exploring how the different experiences and aspects of the program contributed to the development of identity through competing and expanding cultural models.
The findings of this study recommend ways teacher education programs can more directly and effectively impact candidate learning to create optimum experiences, necessary to stimulate and use the tensions between beliefs, practices, and contexts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-08032009-134214 |
| Date | 04 September 2009 |
| Creators | Awenowicz, Melissa A. |
| Contributors | Dr. sj Miller, Dr. Alan Lesgold, Dr. Anthony Petrosky, Dr. Amanda Thein |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08032009-134214/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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